Do Graduation Reporting Standards Mean Anything?

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings introduced new proposed regulations to help clarify how schools, districts and states implement policies and business practices under No Child Left Behind.

 

Among these proposals, Secretary Spellings has asked that high schools be required to use graduation rates that track cohorts of students as they progress through high school. Schools would be required to publish graduation rates for their total student population as well as every group tracked under No Child Left Behind: minority students, economically disadvantaged students, English as Second Language students, and students with disabilities.  

 

Tracking a cohort group means that you take one group, for example ninth graders who entered high school in 2004, and track where the people in that group went: those who stayed on to graduate, moved away, dropped out, graduated in more or less than four years and so on. This sounds easier than it looks; you have to track those who left your school, as well as those who stayed.

 

Unless the Secretary is prepared to put money behind this proposal, it’s more of a hindrance that a help to anyone. Tracking a cohort requires research and reporting the good, bad and the neutral.

 

Colleges track graduation rates; the most promoted are six year rates, the reasons being that students withdraw, but later return to school. They use a six year rate because a six year rate is needed to get complete information about a cohort group. College students may drop out for academic, family, military service or personal financial reasons.

 

High schools will need to use a six year rate as well. A cohort of ninth graders will not all graduate together from the same school four years later for many legitimate reasons. A school located in an economically depressed area will fare poorly under such reporting: parents move away for employment, students have to work to supplement a family’s income, and health is generally poorer in poorer places. Furthermore, people leave a depressed community for a nicer one when their financial situation gets better; why shouldn’t they move to places with better schools?

 

Looking at my list of reasons, I see two things: one, they have little to nothing to do with the quality of education at a particular school and two; they are family decisions over which a school had no control. It might be useful to track if a student at school A who transferred to school B graduated from school B, but is that an effective use of school A’s human resources? I don’t think so, especially in this economy.

 

If the federal government is willing to fund the data collection and tracking as they fund the Census, then fine. Parents could fill out an enrollment form and send it to the Department of Education, without involving the schools, and the schools could sort the data for their needs.

 

The primary intentions for No Child Left Behind are to close achievement gaps and achieve 100 percent proficiency in language arts and math by 2014, not to give the Department of Education a mandate to play big brother or sister—and force districts, schools and states to pay the bill for their oversight.

Is It Time For Teacher Free Agency?

On September 7, 2007, I read the USA Today editorial debate on how to improve No Child Left Behind. One idea stood out: make sure good teachers stay in schools that need help. This included, in the editorial words: “offering substantial bonuses to teach in struggling schools and exposing the fatter payrolls in better off schools.”

 This is business thinking: pursue the best talent from outside your walls if you need a quick fix, and you do not have the time to develop the talent yourself. It is an example where business think might make sense for public schools in a climate of testing and raised hurdles in the pursuit of 100% proficiency by 2014. Those who teach fourth, eight and 11^th grades, as well as special education are the front-line foot soldiers because of standardized testing and reporting. Success–staying off “the lists”–and failure, remaining on them to the point of sanction, is in the hands of these troops.

It is only fair that these teachers, who have take the most risk and responsibility, be the most rewarded if they succeed by the numbers. Like it or not, they will have the statistics to prove their value, while their peers, who teach other subjects, will not.

This places more significance on the tests, but teachers work in a climate where a single bad mark in language arts or math renders an entire school “in need of improvement.” This is overly harsh, but even if the reporting is toned down, there will still be a demand for ratings; we are a rank-conscious culture, people want to feel that they are on top and deny they’re at the bottom.  

Within New Jersey, my home state, there were122 public school districts in teacher’s contract negotiations as of September 4, the first day of school in most quarters. These teachers work under their current contract, until they get a new one. Previous contracts were signed before teachers and school boards had enough time to know the true effects of No Child Left Behind.

School boards are asking teachers to work longer school days; increased time devoted for language arts and mathematics instruction, as well as test preparation meant less time for other subjects and recess. No doubt, concerned parents do not want to see their children short-changed, so a longer school day, or school year, will come with a price tag. So will increased non-classroom responsibilities, such as meetings or progress reports.

Voters served by districts with no schools in need of improvement would have the continued luxury of turning down school budgets. They would not be forced into paying their teachers more money; good schools will always attract good teachers willing to work on the district’s wage scale. Other districts, and the voters, are not so lucky. Their shared motivation would be to get their schools “off the list” as soon as possible. The best way to do it is to target experienced teachers.

 USA Today, along with other sources, have pointed out that the least experienced teachers in floundering schools receive their first assignments in the poorest performing classes. The less experienced are often the front line; that makes no sense in a climate where a teacher has to post the numbers, and teacher attrition has been a long-standing problem.

I just finished one book, Only Connect, by Rudy Crew, former chancellor of the New York City public school system and current superintendent for Miami-Dade Public Schools; Dr. Crew says that one-third of entry-level teachers leave the profession after three years, and one-half of them are gone after five. I have to believe that forcing more accountability on the shoulders of the least experienced teachers, will speed their departures and do nothing to take a truly troubled school “off the list.”

I would like to raise a thought: create an optional free agency for teachers, somewhat similar to professional athletes, whose value is also judged by statistics. Teachers and professional athletes are not too different: they’re paid professionals tested annually and members of a strong union. They’re also unlikely to make their world, their sport, their life’s work. The major differences between athletes and teachers, besides wages, are that teacher’s unions are local and teachers can earn tenure. Those are also major weaknesses in our status quo.

While professional athletes work under a Standard Player Contract, they also have individual agreements with their teams. Those agreements are performance-based. As an agreement comes close to expiring, the player tests his value. They look for a team willing to pay more for their talents, or better fits their style of play.

How come we do not offer a similar option to high potential teachers? Right now, a teacher’s job is tied to their contract; she cannot leave for a school system that might pay better, or surround her with more resources, unless she wants to forgo tenure and start at the bottom. This works vice-versa; a great teacher in a district that performs fine, but pays poorly, cannot pursue an incentive to take on a challenge.

Testing is unlikely to go away, and neither are teacher’s unions and tenure. However, the system should be tweaked so that the best teachers have more career mobility.

Therefore, here is a proposal for the free agent teacher.

Here is how limited free agency might work: areas in need of improvement or investment, such as science education, fourth grade reading, or special education would be labeled as “strategic need” positions. They could be filled from within the system, or outside. Tenured teachers from the outside carry their tenure into their new job. An untenured teacher with a strong resume receives automatic tenure. They would also receive bonuses. Teachers within the system would earn the bonus and keep their tenure.

This business thinking keeps the best teachers in the profession with no negative impact on tenured teachers who prefer to avoid the risks; they still receive the raise that is stipulated in their union contract. The negative impacts fall on untenured teachers who do not want to fill a “strategic need.” They risk losing their jobs. But are those jobs secure now, if they’re in a poor-performing or financially plagued school? I doubt it.

Blasphemy, some might say; this will turn teachers into job jumpers. But continuity is worthless if a teacher is tied to a contract in a failing school system (and I mean a financially failing one) and prevents them from testing their worth. It is worthless if a good teacher has personal reasons, such as relocation of a spouse’s job, to seek a new position. America has become a nation of job jumpers; private sector employers have pulled back on pensions and benefits. Why should teachers be stuck in bad jobs, when other professionals are not?

I know I will be told that the tenure system is a “third rail” in school politics. But limited free agency is more achievable than some other solutions, such as breaking larger schools into smaller units, paying vouchers to send children to private school—or setting our least experienced teachers in our poorest-performing schools up for failure when they’re put into a grade that’s subject to testing. It is less expensive to move teachers than it is to move kids. There are fewer people to move and the teachers have lesser need for subsidized transportation.

Could limited free agency lead to a return to segregated and unequal schools? In a sense, yes. Market forces would help drive teachers to new jobs. However, all schools, emphasize all, can compete for the best talent, depending on the incentives they want to offer. It is up to superintendents, principals—and maybe parents—to know which incentives will work.

This is business thinking that has pervaded since there have been businesses. I know that school districts and teachers unions can make it work.

What Happens When There’s No Public School Choice?

I marveled at the size of Trenton Central High School when I toured the facility on a public tour.

 It is 380,000 square feet; to put that in perspective, imagine three anchor stores in a suburban shopping center stacked one atop the other. Trenton Central High is the seventh most populous secondary school in the Garden State. With nearly 2,800 students, it has the fourth largest enrollment among urban high schools; among New Jersey’s high schools, only Elizabeth High, Dickinson High (Jersey City) and Eastside (Paterson) enroll more students.

 The 75 year-old building has character, as well as a theatre that might have been envied on Broadway half a century ago and a swimming pool that was probably state of the art in its day, but there are the problems that you might expect to find in a structure that’s lasted so long.

 The problems do not stop there; the building is just the tip of the iceberg for this troubled school.

 The Trenton public school system is “in need of improvement” district-wide under No Child Left Behind, and has entered the later years where the school board and administrators must consider options for restructuring elementary, middle school and secondary education. Trenton Central High School has failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under this federal act for the past five years. The Daylight-Twilight High School, also a Trenton public school, is in similar straits.

 Under No Child Left Behind, AYP is based on scores from standardized mathematics and English-language arts examinations. In New Jersey, the bar, or pass rate, is raised each year, with a goal towards 100% proficiency, regardless of race, special education or economic circumstances.

 When a school fails to meet AYP, No Child Left Behind implies several possible remedies: restructure the school, change the management, privatize the school or convert it into a charter school. Parents must also be offered the option to transfer their children to another public school within the same district that has made AYP, or to arrange for tutoring for their children at the district’s expense. 

That leads me to one major concern: what happens when students and their parents have no options–because their local public high school is the only one in town, or they have none that consistently met AYP?

I do not have to look far beyond the Trenton suburbs to find communities in a similar predicament. Three communities that surround Trenton: Ewing, Hamilton and Lawrence Township face the same dilemma. I am not naïve to believe this problem is unique to New Jersey.

The problem is not as much with the schools as it is with No Child Left Behind—the act uses proficiency as the basis for making policy and management decisions.

The measurement of the success or failure of any high school cannot solely be based on student performance on high stakes standardized tests.  High school students are not the same; they have different ambitions, they do not take the same classes, and they have the option of leaving school after they turn 16.

Proficiency can be one performance measure for a high school, but it cannot be the be-all, end-all, for-all. Moreover, No Child Left Behind offers no incentives for a school to perform better, only threats of embarrassment; the annual list of schools that fail to make AYP merely angers residents and parents, and it only validates that perception of a bad school is reality.

A better policy would recognize and reward students who have become more than proficient, and acknowledge a high school’s accomplishments on a broader set of measures that use the tests that their students already take, such as:

• SAT scores: Since people continually mock the intelligence of college football players, why not use their entrance standards as a baseline to find out how many students qualified for college admissions? The NCAA Clearinghouse guidelines for student-athletes could be converted into a performance matrix of grade point averages and test scores. The Clearinghouse guidelines are not only quantifiable; they are also more stringent, as more than 750 four year colleges do not even require the SAT for admissions. High scores and high grades would be assigned the highest point value, low scores and low grades would obviously be rated lower.  Such a matrix might give principals and school board members a sense of the students they are sending on to college.  
• The Armed Force Qualification Test (AFQT) within the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) scores for students who choose military service: according to Military.com, the AFQT is a test of arithmetic reasoning, math knowledge, word knowledge and paragraph comprehension. That sounds much like a standardized test.  Since schools are required to supply student information to the military under No Child Left Behind, the armed services should have no problem sharing the pass/fail rates of the students who take their test.
• Pass rates on licensing examinations, if the school offers pre-professional or vocational training. This is obvious, as the goal of the training programs is to help students pass.
• Proficiency/advanced proficiency on state-required high school examinations such as New Jersey’s High School Proficiency Assessment or New York State’s Regents Examinations.

I would add two other measures: the reduction in the dropout rate and a redefined graduation rate. Beyond age 16, the definition of grade level takes on different meaning depending on the high school.

While well-to-do school districts are likely to have a very high three or four-year graduation rate, others that serve economically disadvantaged students will have students who must juggle school, work and family responsibilities. They are less likely to graduate “on-time”, but it is completely wrong to label them failures when they are dealing with their own reality.

The important thing is that high school principals should have access to the graduation rates for each freshman and transfer class that enters their school, just as college admissions officers do. They should also know why students leave and whether they graduated from another school after they left.

These measures, when combined in some index, would do more than indicate whether a high school is “good” or “bad”; they would show the direction that their students were headed—and if they did, or did not succeed. If the school is the only game in town, then educators may use this information for curriculum development, or work out agreements that offer their students real choices, even if they must transfer to another school.

I doubt that there would be any argument between educators, parents and politicians that the SAT’s or professional and vocational test batteries are already high stakes tests for high school students.  

We need to know what our high school students want to do, whether it is college, employment, military service or family responsibilities, and help them get there. We do not need more standardized tests to give high schools pass-fail grades; their students already take enough of them to get ahead in their lives.